Policy and management implications of smoking-caused wildfire ignitions in Acadia National Park

Review: Parks and People: Managing Outdoor Recreation at Acadia National Park Robert E. Manning (Ed.) Reviewed by Ryder W. Miller Manning, Robert E. (Ed.). Parks and People: Managing Outdoor Recreation at Acadia National Park. Burlington, VT: University of Vermont Press, 2009. 352pp. ISBN 9781584657910. US$49.95,paper. Alkaline paper. The only United States National Park in New England, Maine’s Acadia National Park boasts mountain views, wildlife, diverse ecosystems, scenic roads, and seashore vistas. Acadia's Mount Desert Island and a few other associated islands jut out of the ocean to astound and attract many visitors every year. Naturalist Freeman Tilden called it a rock-built natural fortress which thrusts forward into the Atlantic and challenges its power, (p.194 in Runte, Alfred. National Parks: The American Experience. Lanham, MD: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2010) with a sweep of rugged coastline that has no parallel from Florida to the Canadian provinces. It is also one of the most studied National Parks due to the efforts of Professor Robert E. Manning, Director of the Parks Studies Laboratory at the University of Vermont. Manning collects in this volume over twenty-five research studies on visitorship and transportation at Acadia National Park, which inspires a message and conclusions on how to manage park use for the entire National Park system. Manning concludes from this lengthy body of research simplified into common language, This body of knowledge can be organized and presented in a series of emerging principles that can be used to guide planning and management of outdoor recreation at Acadia and related parks and outdoor recreation areas (p.292). One may think the conclusions are just common sense, but the research presented makes sense of and finds inroads to understand the chaos of visitor engagement with national parks. Manning attempts here to move park management from being an art to a science, making this book useful for park managers, transportation specialists, park planners and those who study park use for other reasons. The book is divided into three sections. The first explores park use indicator variables and park standards. Most of these initials studies concern the effects of excessive visitorship. Part two focuses on the monitoring of these indicator variables. Part three explores management actions needed to preserve standards of visitorship quality. Much of the the research shows that visitors prefer less restrictions and people, conclusions gained here also by the reaction of visitors to park photographs used as a survey tool. The research details the coping strategies used to supply visitor recreation despite the overcrowding of the park resources. This is a problem that is not likely to be solved because it is antithetical to the mission of making parks more available to the public. Even in this light, Acadia's public bus systems have been proven to be beneficial. The findings are relevant to the whole national park system which struggles to accommodate millions of park visitors every year. The focus seems narrow at times, but the work is well researched and shows that Acadia has a tale to tell. Missing are some of the other subjects that could have been explored, including the educational success of interpretive signage, communications to the general public about park changes, and attempts to involve the public in park activities like ecological restoration. Such subjects and issues are more pressing for National Recreation Areas and/or National Seashores which are closer to urban centers. One solution for Acadia National Park may be more National Parks for the northeast. Ryder W. Miller , Freelance environmental and science reporter who has been published in Sierra Magazine, California Coast & Ocean, California Wild, and Hydrosphere. Electronic Green Journal, Issue 30, Spring 2010, ISSN:1076-7975

Science and Public Engagement in National Parks: Examples and Advice from Young Scientists

Nutrient enrichment from atmospheric deposition, agricultural activities, wildlife, and domestic sources is a concern at Acadia National Park on Mount Desert Island, Maine, because of the potential problems of degradation of water quality and eutrophication in estuaries. Degradation of water quality has been observed at Bass Harbor Marsh estuary in the park but only minimally in Northeast Creek estuary. Previous studies at Acadia National Park have estimated nutrient inputs to estuaries from atmospheric deposition and surface-water runoff, and have identified shallow groundwater as an additional potential source of nutrients. Previous studies at Acadia National Park have assumed that a certain fraction of the nitrogen input was removed through microbial denitrification, but rates of denitrification (natural or maximum potential) in marsh soils have not been determined. The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with Acadia National Park, measured in-place denitrification rates in marsh soils in Northeast Creek and in Bass Harbor Marsh watersheds during summer 2008 and summer 2009. Denitrification was measured under ambient conditions as well as after additions of inorganic nitrogen and glucose. In-place denitrification rates under ambient conditions were similar to those reported for other coastal wetlands, although they were generally lower than those reported for salt marshes having high ambient concentrations of nitrate (NO3). Denitrification rates generally increased by at least an order of magnitude following NO3 additions, with or without glucose (as the carbohydrate) additions, compared with the ambient treatments that received no nutrient additions. The treatment that added both glucose and NO3 resulted in a variety of denitrification responses when compared with the addition of NO3 alone. In most cases, the addition of glucose to a given rate of NO3 addition resulted in higher rates of denitrification. These variable responses indicate that the amount of labile carbohydrates can limit denitrification even if NO3 is present. For most sites in both watersheds, the maximum denitrification rates ranged from of 150 to 900 micromoles of nitrous oxide per square meter per hour. These rates were equivalent to the release of 37 to 221 grams of nitrogen per square meter per year. Weak positive correlations were observed for soil temperature and for measured ammonium concentration in groundwater. Weak negative correlations were observed between denitrification rate and water level and specific conductance. The rates of denitrification in Bass Harbor Marsh and Northeast Creek under ambient conditions, both of which were relatively low, indicate that NO3 availability is low in both systems. It is evident from the addition of combined treatments of NO3 and glucose that these marsh soils are capable of comparatively high rates of denitrification, therefore, estuarine eutrophication is not a result of nitrogen inputs to marsh soils that are in excess of the denitrification capacity in these systems. If terrestrial inputs to the estuary are the cause of the observed eutrophic condition in Bass Harbor Marsh, then these inputs to the estuary must bypass the marsh in channelized surface flow, or perhaps they circumvent the marsh in shallow groundwater seepage along subsurface pathways that enter the estuary directly.

We reviewed literature reporting both total and methylmercury from biota from Acadia National Park, Maine, USA. Our review of existing data indicates that 1) mercury contamination is widespread throughout the Park's various aquatic ecosystems; 2) mercury pollution likely represents a moderate to high risk to biota inhabiting the Park; and 3) biota at all trophic levels possess elevated concentrations of both total and methylmercury. Watershed fire history and the resulting post-fire forest succession patterns are an important landscape attribute governing mercury cycling at Acadia National Park. Therefore, park service personnel should consider these factors when planning and implementing Hg biomonitoring efforts. Additional baseline funding from the National Park Service for Hg research and biomonitoring will likely be required in order to further evaluate the spatial and temporal patterns of mercury contamination in the park's biota.

Contemporarily, the COVID-19 has strongly affected plenty of fields including travel industry. This paper takes Acadia National Park in the United States as a reference to investigate the impact of the epidemic on the number of visitors to the park as well as analyze the impact of the change in visitor numbers on businesses in and around the park. To be specific, the data from the national park's official website and hotels near the park on AirDNA will be used to determine the impact on the park and the surrounding economy based on statistical methods and regression equations. According to the results, the number of visitors to Acadia National Park has skyrocketed due to the epidemic, which led to an increase in demand for nearby hotels and hired staff. The increase in visitors also had a negative impact on the sustainability of Acadia National Park, visitor experience, and flora and fauna habitat. To address the issue, the corresponding solutions to are proposed. These results shed light on guiding further explorations for outdoor tourism areas in the post-epidemic era.

Population decline of northern dusky salamanders at Acadia National Park, Maine, USA

Mercury Bioaccumulation in Northern Two-lined Salamanders from Streams in the Northeastern United States

Tyson and Bond's 'Birds of Mt. Desert Island, Acadia National Park' Birds of Mt. Desert Island, Acadia National Park, Maine Carroll Tyson James Bond

There is a long history of recording bird observation in Acadia National Park, ME. These studies and resulting long-term data sets provide evidence of changes happening within and around the park, as well as an opportunity to compare local dynamics with trends detected in regional to continental-scale studies. Over 51 years (1971–2021), community volunteers in and around Acadia National Park engaged in annual Christmas bird counts (CBC), collecting valuable information to assess winter bird-population dynamics and species trends. We analyzed the cumulative data from 2 CBC circles that encompass Acadia and the surrounding lands and waters to generate a combined summary of early winter population-trend estimates for 162 species. We found a 43% reduction in the total number of birds over the 51-year study, with 42 species exhibiting declines, and 33 species showing increasing abundance. The annual number of species observed has declined by over 7%; however, the cumulative species in the full dataset continues to increase as newly observed species are added in most years. Our study complements many other studies from Acadia documenting ongoing changes in the physical environment and coastal biota. Conservation and management actions take place at the local level (e.g., Acadia National Park), and local resource data and trends are critical to synthesize and share for effective decision making.

Identifying refugia— specifically places where species can persist during periods of regionally unsuitable climate— is increasingly important for conservation practitioners and land managers charged with protecting biodiversity in a rapidly warming world. Currently, many researchers assist in this process by building models to predict areas of refugia using climate data projected into the future under different climate scenarios; however, the coarse spatial scale of future climate data can be orders of magnitude larger than the scale of refugia on the landscape. Conservation paleobiology is an emerging field that can contribute to the identification of climate refugia by looking at the macrofossil records contained in sediments to better understand the response of species to past climate change within a small area, and allows us to ground-truth hypotheses about specific areas functioning as climate refugia. Here, we present a conservation paleobiology case study to update vulnerability assessments for subalpine plant species in Acadia National Park and locate potential future refugia on the landscape. We analyzed plant macrofossils in a sediment core from Sargent Mountain Pond in Acadia National Park (Maine, United States) at a fine spatiotemporal resolution to test the hypothesis that the area served as a past climate refugium for the subalpine species it currently hosts. We found that, when compared to a pollen record from a forest hollow core collected on Mount Desert Island, the macrofossils reflect a more stable presence of subalpine taxa throughout the Holocene Climatic Optimum (8,000–5,000 BP) than was observed at lower elevations. Our results indicate the importance of a complementary approach that combines plant macrofossils and pollen in addition to modeling to identify refugia and better understand the vulnerability of species and communities to climate change.

Exotic ant species are a primary threat to ant biological diversity, posing a negative impact to native ant communities. In this study, we examine species richness of ants (family Formicidae) in Acadia National Park, ME, as a fundamental step toward understanding the present impact of the exotic species Myrmica rubra on native ant species. Twelve habitat types were sampled, along six transects, with pitfall traps, visual searching, bait traps, and leaf litter extraction, and the aid of 34 volunteers. We report 42 species of ants in Acadia National Park, comprising five subfamilies (Amblyoponinae, Dolichoderinae, Formicinae, Myrmicinae, and Ponerinae) and 15 genera; the cataloged species represents 75% of the species originally recorded in the area by Procter (1946). Our findings suggest M. rubra is currently not a dominant species throughout the entire island. However, where this species has invaded locally, few competing native species coexist. The species Lasius alienus, Formica subsericea, Myrmica detritinodis, Camponotus herculeanus, Formica argentea, Formica aserva, and Tapinoma sessile occurred most often in our survey. We report the ant species Amblyopone pallipes and Dolichoderus mariae as two new records for the state of Maine.

Abstract. Whereas lichen-habitat relations have been well-documented globally, literature on lichens of vernal pools is scant. We surveyed six vernal pools at Acadia National Park on Mount Desert Island, Maine, USA for their lichen diversity. Sixty-seven species were identified, including seven species that are new reports for Acadia National Park: Fuscidea arboricola, Hypogymnia incurvoides, Lepraria finkii, Phaeographis inusta, Ropalospora viridis, Usnea flammea, and Violella fucata. Five species are considered uncommon or only locally common in New England: Everniastrum catawbiense, Hypogymnia krogiae, Pseudevernia cladonia, Usnea flammea, and Usnea merrillii. This work represents the first survey of lichens from vernal pools in Acadia National Park and strongly suggests that previous efforts at documenting species at the Park have underestimated its species diversity. More work should be conducted to determine whether a unique assemblage of lichens occurs in association with this unique habitat type.

Climate-driven changes in phenology are substantially affecting ecological relationships and ecosystem processes. The role of variation among species has received particular attention; for example, variation among species' phenological responses to climate can disrupt trophic interactions and can influence plant performance. Variation within species in phenological responses to climate, however, has received much less attention, despite its potential role in ecological interactions and local adaptation to climate change. We constructed three common gardens across an elevation gradient on Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park, Maine, to test population-level responses in leaf-out phenology in a reciprocal transplant experiment. The experiment included three native species: low bush blueberry (Vaccinium angustifolium), sheep's laurel (Kalmia angustifolia), and three-toothed cinquefoil (Sibbaldiopsis tridentata). Evidence for local adaptation of phenological response to temperature varied among the species, but was weak for all three. Rather, variation in phenological response to temperature appeared to be driven by local microclimate at each garden site and year-to-year variation in temperature. Population-level adaptations in leaf-out phenology appear to be relatively unimportant for these species in Acadia National Park, perhaps a reflection of strong genetic mixing across elevations, or weak differences in selection on phenological response to spring temperatures at different elevations. These results concur with other observational data in Acadia and highlight the utility of experimental approaches to understand the importance of annual and local site variation in affecting phenology both among and within plant species.

Major ion and mercury (Hg) inputs to terrestrial ecosystems include both wet and dry deposition (total deposition). Estimating total deposition to sensitive receptor sites is hampered by limited information regarding its spatial heterogeneity and seasonality. We used measurements of throughfall flux, which includes atmospheric inputs to forests and the net effects of canopy leaching or uptake, for ten major ions and Hg collected during 35 time periods in 1999–2005 at over 70 sites within Acadia National Park, Maine to (1) quantify coherence in temporal dynamics of seasonal throughfall deposition and (2) examine controls on these patterns at multiple scales. We quantified temporal coherence as the correlation between all possible site pairs for each solute on a seasonal basis. In the summer growing season and autumn, coherence among pairs of sites with similar vegetation was stronger than for site-pairs that differed in vegetation suggesting that interaction with the canopy and leaching of solutes differed in coniferous, deciduous, mixed, and shrub or open canopy sites. The spatial pattern in throughfall hydrologic inputs across Acadia National Park was more variable during the winter snow season, suggesting that snow re-distribution affects net hydrologic input, which consequently affects chemical flux. Sea-salt corrected calcium concentrations identified a shift in air mass sources from maritime in winter to the continental industrial corridor in summer. Our results suggest that the spatial pattern of throughfall hydrologic flux, dominant seasonal air mass source, and relationship with vegetation in winter differ from the spatial pattern of throughfall flux in these solutes in summer and autumn. The coherence approach applied here made clear the strong influence of spatial heterogeneity in throughfall hydrologic inputs and a maritime air mass source on winter patterns of throughfall flux. By contrast, vegetation type was the most important influence on throughfall chemical flux in summer and autumn.

Travel to Acadia National Park has been rising in the recent past, with over 3.5 million visitors recorded in 2018 (NPS, 2018). With visitation on the rise in Acadia and many of the national parks, there may be increased risks of injuries, and even deaths, from motor vehicle and/or bike crashes. However, statistical relationships between visitation levels and transportation crash-related injuries and fatalities in national parks are not well understood in research on transportation management in parks and protected areas.The roadways in national parks usually support multiple transportation modes and provide recreation opportunities for visitors such as scenic roads. Previous research suggests that traffic accidents are a leading cause of injuries and fatalities in national parks, but it has not been recognized as a prominent safety issue by the general public. This paper selected Acadia National Park as a study case, aiming at analyzing the temporal patterns of motor vehicle and bike crashes from 2007 to 2012, and to identify the factors associated with the monthly counts of motor vehicle and bike crashes. Study results indicated that the average monthly count of multi-vehicle crashes was much higher than that of single-vehicle crashes. Both motor vehicle and bike crashes were concentrated in the summer season. Simple moving average method was used to calculate the hourly counts of traffic crashes. The average single-vehicle crash counts peaked at 14:00, representing 0.002 crash per hour. Multi-vehicle crash counts were highest between 13:00 and 14:00, representing 0.012 crashes per hour. Poisson Log-linear Regression models were conducted to identify the factors impacting motor vehicle crashes and bike crashes. The results suggested that visitor number was an important factor that associated with both motor vehicle crashes and bike crashes. Also, the number of rain days per month had a significant impact on the count of bike lane crashes but had no significant impact on the count of bike path crashes. Therefore, the study recommended park managers to provide biking education specifically for wet conditions. Results of this study identify the quantitative relationship among monthly visitor number, monthly rain days, and monthly count of traffic crashes, which may help build the indicators and standards of public safety on roadways of national parks. Subscribe to JPRA